655 : Expectations

Haiku Heights has the prompt "Expectations"

The sad pessimist

Is never disappointed.

Never pleased, either.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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654 : Horatio

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #141) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

think, tip, tincture, tint, integral, synchronize

softly, with, blast, chance, answer, map.

Horatio

He was the admiral of the fleet

Softly spoken though indescrete,

Integral to the French defeat

The glorious Admiral Nelson!

He synchronized the battle plans

With expert eye and steady hands,

Mapped the route to foreign lands,

The admirable Admiral Nelson!

The seas were dark, of leaden tint,

The scene was set with sail and flint

Cannons made the woodwork splint---ter

All eyes upon the Admiral Nelson!

Dust and smoke blocked out the sun,

You think the apocalypse had come,

But victory when the day was done,

Three cheers for the Admiral Nelson!

But he copped a blast of wayward shot,

“Kiss me, Hardy!”? – it matters not,

How to stop the body rot---ting?

What to do with the Admiral Nelson?

The answer came, both quick and dandy,

Tip him into a barrel, handy,

Like a new age cumquat brandy,

Home preserving for the Admiral Nelson!

When the fleet was back in port

The bos’un had a grim report:

There remained no marinade of any sort

A rum to-do for the Admiral Nelson!

The crew had drunk the barrel dry

Of the tincture of the naval guy

No-one thought to wonder why

It tasted of the Admiral Nelson!

Lady Hamilton rued his sad demise,

Never more would his column rise,

So the empire supplied a larger size

And a State farewell to Admiral Nelson.

So sailors, should you chance to roam,

Be an admiral and not a drone,

And get a column of your own,

Look up to the Admiral Nelson!

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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653 : Divertimenti

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were crisp, exquisite and magnificent.

Divertimenti

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,

A prodigious talent,

Producing exquisite music

With magnificent intent.

Crisp and bright,

A music for the night.

But think—

If he’d been born today,

He would do the programming part

For a start-up in Bombay.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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652 : High Rise

Imaginary Garden with Real Toads has the prompt of 'bamboo'.

High Rise

Bamboo forests.

Quick growing,

Towering upwards,

With no interaction.

Sleek, tall and discrete,

Tubular belles.

Compartmentalised.

The wind

Whistles

Mournfully

Around them,

Through them.

They sway slightly

And moan to the sky.

As solid as they are,

They are largely 

Empty.

Apartment blocks.

In green.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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651 : The Deficiency of Youth

Picture from Red Dirt Girl, I think (Tumblr)

Theme Thursday has the prompt 'Youth'.

The Deficiency of Youth

Time,

And hence age,

Gives a wisdom,

An aptitude

To apply 

Skills,

Techniques

Beyond

The functional.

Embracing

The subtleties 

Of which the raw

Mechanical

Energy of youth 

Is completely

Oblivious.

Youth knows how.

Age knows why.

And also—

Why not.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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650 : Gifts

Haiku Heights has the prompt "Gifts"

The gifts worth having

Are not those bought with money

But freely given.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

649 : The Piper

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

The rest is up to us:

The Piper

The bravery of someone who blows

On bagpipes, is hard to suppose.

As they pump and exhale

It lets out a high wail—

Like a cat in its final death throes.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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648 : The Agency

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #140) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

spider, echo, clear, level, attend, pulverize

intact, fly, shuttle, means, follow, listen, split.

The Agency

They build webs

Lightly

Quietly

Always listening

And attending

To vibrations,

Echoes of activity

Of interest;

Clear messages 

To attend to,

To shuttle across to,

To follow to the source

And pulverize,

Figuratively.

Or literally.

The small fly,

The small fry,

The little guy,

Who, at some level,

Has tweaked 

Their tendrils,

Tweaked their interest,

And though captured intact

The mind will be split

From the body—

Stress positions,
Ways and means,

Enhanced interrogation.

They are a spider

Multiple eyes,

Multiple arms

Venomous.

We should feel safer

But we don’t.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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647 : The Sarong

The Sarong

The folk who devised the sarong

Have a history incredibly strong.

They’ve worn it, it appears,

For thousands of years,

But it’s amazing it’s lasted this long.

The sarong is kept classically sewn

While the rest of society’s grown.

Sure, it’s casual and light

But there are no pockets in sight

You can use to store your iPhone.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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646 : The Knight Errant

Prompted by recent events,

But really just a fictional doodle.

The Knight Errant.

Wherever do you keep your horse?

And who scoops up the crap it leaves behind?” 

― Myra McEntire.

Waving the flag for a lady,

And fighting whom she decrees,

He’s a member of a tiny band

Who few can really understand

And, acting rather mercenary,

Doing what is necessary

To be the perfect emissary,

Valiant knight from another land,

Waving the flag.

The lady, of course, can clearly see

The perfect opportunity

To remove the knights she cannot stand.

And if they think they’ll win her hand,

The chivalrous will always be

Waving the flag.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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645 : The Taunter

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were combative, represent and sluggish.

Joe Hockey, our poor excuse for a treasurer

taunted General Motors, dared them to leave the country. 

So they did.  Good job, Joe.

The Taunter

Some people, 

Itching for a fight,

Are needlessly combative.

And pound their particular pulpit,

Dull and uncreative.

You find

They wield a sluggish mind,

They sit

And say they represent

The holy forces of The Right

But evidence is absent.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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644 : The Caretaker

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #139) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

fix, apart, snatch, cover, pair, angel

waves, simple, box, clay, lies, moon

The Caretaker

Beneath the moon,

Beneath the clay,

In a simple box,

Lies a simple man.

He was a believer,

This simple man.

He believed 

That a celestial father,

Attended by a pair or so
Of luminous angels,

Would never, ever

Permit our world,

His world, 

Genesis one one,

To fall apart,

To come undone,

No matter 

How bad it got,

How hot it got.

It would never happen.

He believed that

No matter 

How many storms

And crashing waves

And searing droughts

And floods, 

And fires, 

And blizzards

Were visited upon us

To cover our world,

With pain, 

And suffering 

And death,

All within our control,

But beyond our will,

That his diety,
His God,
Would protect him,

That all would be well.

He believed that
God,

His God,

Would fix it all,

Would snatch him,

A true believer,

But a negligent caretaker,

From the unfortunate mess

That he had made

To a heaven 

Built of his desiring.

Never seeing that 

He had made a hell

From the one heaven that 

He would ever be given,

This simple man,

In a simple box,

Beneath the clay,

Beneath the moon.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

643 : The Office Christmas Party

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were highlight, instruct and submit.

Last year, after my workplace Xmas party,

one of the senior management (female!) reached over

and twiddled my left nipple.  

Presumably part of the 

staff recognition program.

The Office Christmas Party

I’m not here to instruct, of course;

Just giving some advice—

It’s now that office parties hit

Or tweak, to be precise.

What fun! 

But
highlights
the risks
you run.

Submit

If you must

To the false façades

But wear a jumper

Thick and coarse,

And a pair of 

Nipple guards.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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642 : Ode to a Cow

My thanks to Foss, Denmark, for the physical prompt.

Ode to a Cow.

Frankie is a Friesian

A special kind of cow,

Frankie is my saviour:

Let me tell you how.

Frankie is a stress cow

A foamy rubber ball

Frankie can be screwed up

And thrown against the wall.

Frankie is a Friesian

Made of squidgy stuff,

Frankie takes a lot of flack,

You can treat her rough.

Frankie is a stress cow

With stumpy little feet

Frankie lets you toss her

And is stoically discrete.

Frankie is a Friesian

Who will never irritate;

Frankie can be trusted -

A most endearing trait.

Frankie is a stress cow

Who helps me through the day

Frankie stands and listens

And she never turns away.

Frankie is a Friesian

A special kind of cow,

Frankie is as dumb as dirt

But I like her anyhow.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

641 : A Life in the Day

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #138) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

prison, cloak, become, lens, goods, cash,

pursuit, skirt, cruel, wild, Venus, beloved

A Life in the Day

We emerge

From a prison 

Of sorts,

A safe house

Some say,

Into the light,

Into a world

That is harsh,

Wild even, 

Wildly uneven,

Sometimes comforting

Often cruel,

And frequently unfair.

What we do,

What we become,

In our pursuit 

Of purpose,

How we skirt, 

—Or not,

Disasters 

And the vagaries

Of our fate

Is as unpredictable

As the landing 

Of a falling leaf.

Our life when viewed 

Is through a lens

But darkly so.

Venus,

The Morning Star,

The Evening Star,

The goddess of love,

Is with us

All the way.

Who will be

Our ‘beloved’?

And who us for them?

And for how long?

And why?

If we follow

The approved

Pathway

We will worship

Cash

And accumulate

Goods.

But of what value

Are these things?

The day

Of our life,

The small flicker

In the fabric of time

Will, like the sun,

Rise,

Peak,

And decline,

Until the night, 

Like a cloak,

Is laid upon us.

We must use the time

Wisely.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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640 : Friday

Friday

It’s Friday tonight

I can turn off the alarm—

And get up early.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

639 : Once a jackal

Once a Jackal.

The jackal,

A street fighter,

A brawler,

Cunning,

Conniving,

Sly as they come,

With awkward gait

And imitation smile,

Hunting

As a pack,

Can bring down 

A leopard.

But

A Jackal

Will always

Be a jackal.

And

A leopard

Will always

Be a leopard.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

638 : Mandate? Blind Date!

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were Brief, Expose and Insist.

Mandate?  Blind date!

It was lost, more than being won,

A voter’s stern protest.

Now they insist they have a mandate

And expose their hairy chests,

And scare the people living there.

Too late, they recoil in disbelief.

The marriage — an arranged one,

The honeymoon was brief.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

637 : Once in a blue moose...

A work colleague tried to tell me that Swedish Mooses

were one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases on the planet. 

I disagreed, of course, but a limerick seemed appropriate.

Once in a blue moose…

A moose that lives in cold Sweden

Does little ‘xcept feedin’ and breedin’,

It’s said that its farting

Is thoroughly disheartening

And speeds the ice cap’s recedin’

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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636 : First Flight

Sunday Scribblings has the prompt ‘Flight’.

It’s spring in Australia and the air is full of flapping.

First Flight.

All fluff and beak

And adrenalin,

Claws

Grasp

The branch 

Tightly.

Until chirps

(Or nudges)

Of encouragement

Pry them free

And, with a panicky

Squawk!

Take a leap of faith,

And fluff,

And adrenalin,

And fly!

Like an eggbeater.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

635 : The Observer

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #136) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

habits, create, however, virtue, regard, gap,

cycle, undoing, lessen, choice, gathering, suffering

In a week where Australia has been found to be hacking 

the Indonesian president's wife's phone, this seemed topical.

But spying, of course, comes in many guises.

The Observer.

Please, please

Don’t call it spying.

Call it 

Information gathering

And regard it 

As a virtue,

As a choice we make

To know our neighbours,

As ourselves.

Cycling 

Finely,

Intimately,

Through their thoughts

Quietly, 

Secretly, 

On the side,

Is one of those habits

That is hard to stop

That is hard to drop

And it’s good for us to know...

We rationalize.

However

One man’s virtue 

Can be another man’s 

Undoing;

Attempts to lessen

Misunderstanding

To reduce the gap, 

As it were,

Between what is said

And what is meant

Can lead to suffering

If what you learn,

The truth of the matter,

Hurts.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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634 : The Moppet

dVerse Poets challenges us to write a Nerudan ode.

The Moppet

Sweet and pure

To the viewer,

All flounce and bounce,

And basely pure,

A coquette

With hair hot-curled

And perfect skin

Brushed 

And glowing

To defy her age,

In frocks

And smocks

And bobby socks

And yet her eyes

Are knowing

Of her role—

A toy thing

In a corporate world.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

633 : Shackled

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were bitter, manipulate and tight.

Shackled

Politicians manipulate—

A universal rule.

When things are tight 

They lie like thieves

And take us all for fools.

Docile

We feign a limpid smile.

Grieve, but passively collude—

Collude and so capitulate

To bitter servitude.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

632 : Doomed to Fry

“God is a woman”, says my spy,

"All men are doomed to forever fry:

They know perfectly well

They’ll be sent down to Hell,

To roast, 

But they'll never know why."

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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631 : A fellow who'd frequently jest...

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

The rest is up to us:

A fellow who’d frequently jest

Has sadly been laid to his rest.

They thought he was joking

When he said he was choking,

As a gag, it was one of his best.

◊◊◊

Godiva was speaking in jest

When she offered to horse-ride, undressed.

But when put on the spot,

She discarded the lot—

Those who peeked were clearly impressed.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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630 : The Professional Woman

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #135) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

race, silky, lanky, whiskey, puddle, pain, mouth

isolate, murky, breath, marsh, razor, befuddled

The Professional Woman.

The Youth

Full of promise

She stands proud;

Tall, lanky, silky haired,

A bloom is seen upon her:

The first warm peach of summer.

The Woman

Life can turn on a razor’s edge,

Decisions taken lightly,

Lead to murky and dark places.

The urgent breath from the mouths 

Of strange men 

Warms her neck 

And pays her bills.

The Old Woman

Her attractions have faded

And she lives in a marsh,
A swamp of befuddled pain

And whiskey driven relief.

Unloved and unwanted

She sits and watches the rain.

The Grave

Life, we are told, is a race

Some win, some struggle

And many lose.

Some lose worse than others.

And take up small plots

In isolated corners, 

Unmarked and unlamented.

Rain pock marks the puddles,

But it too is uncaring.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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629 : Best served cold.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were aggressive, heighten and limited.

Best served cold.

Things can be thrown aggressively

And bridges can be burnt;

In the process the mind shuts down—

No lessons can be learnt.

Sadness follows from this madness

Around a limited sense of right.

Revenge is taken progressively

Which heightens the delight.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

628 : A woman whose morals were lax...

Mad Kane has a regular limerick challenge.

She provides the first line,

the rest is up to us.

Illustration provided by a
New South Welsh reader.

A woman whose morals were lax,

Despite some corrective firm smacks,

Dressed up in deep scarlet,

And lived as the harlots

Who spent all the night on their backs.

◊◊

A duck, whose bowels were quite lax,

Had severe diahorrea attacks.

He thought it unfair

That he missed Medicare

And had to be treated by quacks.

◊◊

A fellow was terribly lax

In filling and filing his tax.

But in the auditor’s pursuit

They missed all his loot

Buried in the garden, in sacks.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

627 : No Man's Land

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #134) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

buckle, gain, miss, instant, navigate, grace

visions, humming, drill, dignity, years, stride

Tomorrow, November 11th, is Armistice Day.

No Man’s Land

The poppies wave in the breeze,

Vibrant.  Enchanting.  

Deep red.  Blood red.

But with black hearts.

Visions of grace and dignity over the years,

They are symbols of missed opportunities,

Symbols of the bloody waste

That is human warfare.

Every year we look at them, 

These beautiful poppies,

And our mind navigates the ugly 

And painful story that they embody,

To a prettier place.

We see visions of young men

Proudly striding in their uniforms,

Cleanly pressed, buckles gleaming,

Marching, in a well polished drill,

Passing through our streets.

Triumphant.

Crowds cheer, wave flags,

Humming patriotic songs 

As the procession passes from view,

Happy that for a brief instant 

They shared the glory,

The clean, crisp sanitized glory.

No battlefield for them,

No cold, wide-eyed panic,

No stench of death and decay.

No holding a dying compatriot.

They do not share these things,

They stay on the warm side of no man’s land.

Where the sweet poppies grow.

But like a low thunder on the horizon,

The threat of war is still there, always there.

One has to ask, for all who have died,

What did we gain?

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

.

626 : Jemima Paddy Duck

Idle thoughts from a Balinese rice field…

Jemima Paddy Duck

(Apologies to Beatrix Potter).

This is the story of a duck

Who lived amongst the rice.

She grew quite fat on worms and snails

And life was rather nice.

But for every ying there is a yang,

For light there is a shade;

A balance in the universe –

What grows must too decay.

And so the duck with the lucky life

Met the axe’s force

And appeared upon the dinner plate

With rice and hoi-sin sauce.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

625 : The Coffee Grinder

Posted from beside a pool in Bali.

The Coffee Grinder

He is old, somewhere over eighty,

Brown, creased and nearly toothless;

Indelible signs of a long life, well lived.

With pride, he showed us his coffee factory,

A wonder of function and innovation.

Filtered through a translator,

He talked of the beans
And their passage through the process.

Of the sorting, the roasting, the sieving and grinding 

That lead to the fine, brown, aromatic powder

Stored in lined, woven bags.

He urged us to smell and we obeyed.

Coffee will never be the same again;

All future cups will be infused with the echo

Of the memories

Of the aroma 

Of the old man

Met in that dark building

In the Balinese jungle.

He also talked,

Through the translator,

Of his love for his wife,

Of his loneliness since she had died.

As we left, I went to shake his hand.

But instead he put his arms around me,
Embraced me warmly

And, with tears in his eyes,

Asked “When will you be coming back”

No translation was necessary.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

Gone Troppo

Running off to the tropics for three weeks.

Play nicely while I'm away.

-

624 : The Cinema

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #131) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

amalgam, gravel, trash, nothing, cheat, vacant, 

brick, mouth, tentacles, fence, notices, everything, balance

The Cinema

We sit, as zombies,

Focussed on the screen in front.

Watching everything

But noticing nothing.

Cars explode, as they never would.

Slimy and cupped tentacles explore.  

Prodding.  Hunting.  Threatening.

Husbands cheat on wives,

Ruin lives. Or not. 

Singlets and bras survive explosions.

While brick fences offer scant resistance.

Ammunition is in plentiful supply.

Story lines vary.  Some trash.  Others more so.

All is black and white, good guys bad guys,

There is no balance.  No shades of grey.

We sit, as zombies,

Focussed on the screen in front.

Our faces, not vacant, but animated.

We laugh as one,

We scream as one,

Like a room of ruminants, 

We eat as one.

The rhythmic passage of crisps, bag to mouth,

Replicating a battalion of troops,

Marching on a gravel path.

Toffees, the arch enemy of amalgam, 

Sucked in open-mouthed absorption.

Popcorn, in vast tubs, comes and go.

The low nutritional input from the screen

Closely matches the viewer’s diet.

Which, I wonder, does the most harm?

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

623 : No wonder he never married.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week were daunting, fastidious & intensify.

No wonder he never married.

A habit that’s daunting to relate,

Intensified to a daily debate:

With precision most hideous,

The guy was fastidious

How peas were arranged on his plate.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

---

622 : The Nest

Artist - Lucy Newton

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #129) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

chance, nest, secret, clever, swept, ripe, 

blinked, stars, basket, flesh, saw, hand

The Nest

It was a chance meeting,

All first meetings are.

She saw him before he saw her,

Saw him walking alone 

Along the unswept, 

Flower-edged country path

That skirted the copse.

The copse where the first berries appeared,

Where small and noisy children

With sticky hands and wicker baskets

Fossicked for the plump flesh of ripe fruit.

She saw them as they reached past her

But they didn’t see her.

Anxiety fluttered her breast

But people, no matter how clever,

Don’t see what they are not looking for.

That’s why they no longer see the stars.

The man was different.

He walked as if it was all that he had to do,

As if it was the most important thing in the world,

As if, at that moment, it was his world.

He saw her, of course.

Their eyes met.

And, as if sharing a secret of the universe,

Locked together for a moment,

Acknowledged each other,

Blinked,

And moved on.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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